Till Death Do We Scare (1982) ****
Poor Irene (Olivia Cheng) – every man she marries dies as soon as they tie the knot! Fortunately (?), her three dead husbands, who loiter around the house as ghosts, want Irene to be happy, so they determine to locate another, hopefully more durable husband for her and pick incompetent radio horror show host Alan (Alan Tam). What follows is essentially a series of slapstick shenanigans as the ghosts, invisible to Irene and Alan, pull various stunts to bring the couple together. Complicating matters are the machinations of evil spirits who would prefer to see Alan dead.
Till Death Do We Scare is typical fare for the Chinese ghost comedy genre, but with the odd, added attraction of stretchy Beetlejuice-style special effects by none other than Tom Savini. The best comic set piece in the movie is probably the haunted chair that refuses to let fat guy Eric Tsang sit in it; but other highlights include a deflatable ghost face, an animated pig’s head on buffet table, a decomposing princess with amorous intentions, and an unfortunate sucker who rolls down a hill and gets flattened by a steamroller. Till Death Do We Scare has the madcap energy viewers have come to expect of the Hong Kong film industry in the eighties, and should please devotees of the Chinese horror comedy.
4 out of 5 stars.
Vampire’s Breakfast (1987) ***1/2
Fat Piao (Kent Cheng) is a portly Hong Kong photojournalist investigating a series of what appear to be vampire murders, but police refuse to believe his stories, and only a sleazy thief (Keith Kwan) is willing to help him. Vampire’s Breakfast, like The Haunted Cop Shop (1987), is not a typical indigenous Chinese hopping vampire movie, but a horror hybrid featuring a rotten-looking blond Caucasian bloodsucker (Simon Willson) with the usual western susceptibilities to crucifixes and wooden stakes – or, as the subtitles would have it, a “mahogany nail”. Pretty, pouty Emily Chu, whom action enthusiasts may remember from John Woo’s classic A Better Tomorrow (1986), adds a deal of grace as Piao’s love interest, Angie, while Parkman Wong contributes irksome antagonism as skeptical Inspector Chen.
The movie drags a bit in the middle, but does feature a handful of suspenseful sequences, generally drenched in creepy blue moonlight and city shadows. A clandestine visit to a morgue makes for one of the more memorable scenes, while a spurting decapitation at the end should please gorehounds. One does wish, however, that the nastiness of one early scene in a strip club had been sustained throughout the film. Veteran viewers of Hong Kong horror will probably enjoy Vampire’s Breakfast, but prissier audiences accustomed to Criterion disc production standards are hereby warned that the subtitles on the Fortune Star DVD release are more than usually sloppy, resulting in lines of dialogue like, “Tow big eyes were ataring at me”.
3.5 out of 5 stars.
Vampire’s Breakfast trailer
icareviews 
Chinese ghost comedies? This is a real genre?
Wow.
I don’t know what the Hong Kong film industry is like today, but back in the Hong Kong new wave heyday of the 80s there were tons of these ghost movies made, mostly comedies.
Good to ow it’s not only negroes who are afeared of ghosts!
“Vampire’s Breakfast” reminded me a bit of “The Night Stalker” series of the early 70’s. Ever watch those?
I’ve heard my father talk about it, but no, I’ve never watched The Night Stalker.
Here’s the pilot. There are others from the series up on youtube too.
Thanks. I’ll check it out.
(y)
I finally watched the Kolchak pilot, The Night Stalker, tonight, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s fairly traditional with its approach to the vampire mythos, and isn’t terribly original, but McGavin is a good leading man, the action is fairly suspenseful, and the location shooting in Las Vegas is fun. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of the 70s TV movies I’ve seen, Gargoyles (1972) and Trilogy of Terror (1975) being among the best. The only cruddy 70s TV movie I’ve seen is the other one I watched tonight: the flopped series pilot Good Against Evil (1977), a boring mishmash of the satanic material that was popular at the time, with elements from Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen thrown together to corny effect.